


Chevy G10

by thegirlnamedcove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, M/M, Mischief, Scooby inspired, Sterekscooby, Sterekweek2018, and he would have gotten away with it too, mostly the van, pre berica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 19:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16414541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlnamedcove/pseuds/thegirlnamedcove
Summary: In which Scott buys a van off the side of the road because he's a good alpha, goddamit. No one could have foreseen the consequences.





	Chevy G10

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sterek Week 2018.
> 
> Day 1: Scooby Doo theme
> 
> A Chevy G10 is just one of the models used as inspiration for the Mystery Machine, and it is in fact (1) a classic car worth thousands of dollars and (2) ugly as fuck.

 

[1]

 

“I got a van!”

“You got a...van?”

Stiles tilted his head each direction, but the image in front of his eyes still wouldn't resolve into anything different. Just Scott with a wide toothy grin, standing next to a rusted navy blue panel van with one tail light broken and then covered over with red tape.

“ _Why_ did you get a van? And where and...why?”

“For the pack!” Scott smacked the hood a few times for emphasis. “This way we'll all fit, instead of taking a bunch of different vehicles, and there'll even be extra room for our equipment. Weapons and shit.”

“But what about the Jeep?” Stiles was ashamed to admit he was pouting. He turned away toward the back of the van like he was inspecting the large rust spot along the bumper, to hide his own reactions. “The Jeep can do all those things.”

Scott's brow furrowed. “The pack is ten people now. That’s way too much for the Jeep, and anyway this is bigger. And doesn't need, like, a lot of mechanical work.”

Stiles turned back just to raise a judgemental eyebrow at Scott, who scoffed.

“I said a lot. It needs some stuff, but mostly like visual stuff. Cosmetic, or whatever. The engine was rebuilt just a couple of years ago. What's wrong, do you not like it?”

He knew the pleading, pitiful lilt to Scott's voice was an act. It had been in kindergarten and it would be when they were old and gray. Still, it pushed at his emotional center, and just like always he found himself pivoting away from the possibility of hurting Scott's feelings.

“No, I like it, it's just… a surprise. You didn’t even mention you were looking for something new.”

“Well,” Scott shrugged, “it sort of fell into my lap, parked on the road with a sign like it was. And I just figured, what the hell, you know?”

Stiles nodded, a little absent minded, and started to circle the vehicle, already cataloguing all the defects he could see that they would need to get handled before this thing became the official McCall Pack’s main transport.

“When did we get to ten people anyway? I still feel like we're such a small pack, but ten?”

“You, me, Kira, Allison, Isaac, Derek, Boyd, Erica, Lydia, Jackson. It sneaks up on you.”

 

[2]

 

It turned out most of the damage _was_ cosmetic, much to Stiles’ surprise, and even more surprising was the person who’d stepped forward to fix it up. Boyd had worked at the local auto shop for a year at that point, but it was doing bookkeeping to Stiles’ knowledge. He didn’t think they let people tinker around without going to, like, mechanic college. Was that a thing? He was pretty sure it was a thing.

Anyway, it turned out that at some point in between all the number crunching and tax code, Boyd had taken an interest in the painting process, and was now more than qualified to be sitting in Derek's garage: an assortment of paint colors lined up on the floor, a professional looking airbrush gun in his hand, and a breathtakingly realistic portrait of a wolf howling in front of the full moon taking shape on the side of the van.

It was so tacky, the sort of thing Stiles would mock others for relentlessly, and yet he couldn't help but feel fond over it. They had a van now. With a big, obnoxious mural on the side.

Like most weeks, the pack meeting had been held at Derek’s house, and then most if not all of them had lingered. Erica, Allison, and Kira were out sparring in the woods, a complicated scrimmage that was part tag and part capture the flag. Scott and Jackson were still tersely arguing over the patrol assignments--Jackson felt that being assigned the upper east corner was some kind of slight and he deserved something more central--and Isaac and Lydia were spectating the argument. Which left Derek and Stiles to stand around in the driveway, watching the wolf mural slowly come together.

“You know it’s really unsettling when the two of you lurk like that, right?”

Derek snorted, but neither of them moved. Boyd was working on the details of the fur just then, little flecks of silver in among the beigey bright color he’d chosen to go around the ruff of the neck and shoulders. No one had commented yet, but it almost looked like Erica, albeit in a form she couldn’t take. But when she was in beta shift, her hair took on almost a silvery quality in the tips and the highlights, layered over top of the blond hair she sprouted down the long collumn of her neck and over her shoulders, like the fur collar of a coat. If she could alpha shift, Stiles bet she would look a lot like the one on the van.

It had been years of Boyd and Erica circling one another. For all her bravado, Erica seemed almost timid to make the first move. She was confident in every other scenario, but in this she didn’t seem willing to risk rejection, and without her pushing things forward they would remain at a standstill. Boyd had said before, albeit not in front of Erica, that he was content to follow wherever she led. Of course he wanted more, but if she wanted to be just friends, well, he could settle into that role.

It was maddening to watch. One of these days, Stiles swore he was going to lock the two of them in a closet until they figured it out.

Derek hummed deep in his throat. “I made a good choice with you guys.”

Boyd’s hand paused in its path, causing the paint to build up and a fat silver circle to break up his otherwise slender strokes of color. He reached over to turn the machine off, leaving a gaping silence in its place. Stiles swivelled to look at him, eyebrows raised, but Derek kept his gaze on the mural, his jaw clenched tight.

“I mean, I...I wasn’t a great alpha, and I wonder sometimes if I had any business offering anyone the bite, but…” he raised his voice so that Isaac could hear him inside the house and, hopefully, Erica in the woods, “You’re all such amazing people, and you bring so much to the pack, I can’t imagine not having you here.”

A blush had crept into Derek’s cheeks, and he tucked his chin down to avoid making eye contact after that display of feelings.

“Wow, man, that was...really great of you. Lot of words, unsolicited words even.” Stiles clapped him on the shoulder, because how the fuck else was he supposed to respond to all that?

“Yeah, well.” He scratched a the back of his neck with one hand, buried the other deep in his pocket. “Kathy was telling me that I should try, um...vocalizing my thoughts. If I think something positive, I’m supposed to just blurt it out, see if it changes my mindset. It’s my homework this week.”

Ah, Kathy. The infamous therapist. Stiles’ puzzled smile softened and he gripped Derek’s shoulder a little tighter before letting it go.

“Kathy’s a smart lady,” he said, and then Boyd cleared his throat, sounding suspiciously affected for someone who was still staring stone faced at the side of the van.

“I’m glad you chose me too. If the bite worked the other way, I would’ve chosen you back.”

He reached out, and flipped the airbrush machine back on before getting back into short strokes of silver, each flicking out to a precise point thanks to the tight motion of his wrist. He left the odd silver circle alone, and didn’t attempt to reshape it.

 

[3]

 

The van was acting weird.

It turned out that it did fit all of them, plus an impressive cache of weapons. Jackson and Isaac had helped fit a wooden trunk into the space behind the back row of seats that functioned as the trunk, with a row of supernatural and mundane locks to keep it closed. They didn’t need anyone pillaging their little portable armory, and it really was an armory. Two collapsible compound bows, eight pistols including the over polished Desert Eagle that Jackson had gotten god knows where, two collapsible bo staffs, an iron mace, a rosewood distaff, and every spare space between all of those filled with bullets, wolfsbane, mountain ash, and explosives. They were ready for anything, and ready to go anywhere.

Not that Beacon Hills was that big a town. They mostly used it to drive out to Costco or do loops on the Preserve’s service roads.

But just a few weeks into the new van’s service, it had started misbehaving. Doors they were certain they had locked stood open in the morning when they all shuffled out of the pack house. The panel below the steering wheel started popping open at the slightest provocation, allowing the tangled nest of wires to dump out of the steering column. The parking brake would disengage, and the whole thing would start creeping forward, seemingly headed for the road all by its damn self at two miles an hour. One notable morning, Derek had glanced out the front window and then leapt in place like a cat, tearing out the front door and bounding down the porch steps toward the van. It was on the move, gaining speed as it reached the gentle decline of the access road, with all its doors open looking like a beetle about to take flight. Derek caught up with it, after a few scrambling attempts to grab at a handle and missing, and finally jammed his foot against the break just two feet from the big oak at the edge of the property. When he fired up the engine and slowly directed the van back up the hill, practically the whole pack was gaping at the scene from the porch.

It was kept in the garage after that, but it didn’t really set anyone’s nerves at ease. After all, what would happen if a door suddenly popped open on the freeway or the brake chose to engage at random the same way it was disengaging? For all that they’d gotten a clean bill of health from Stiles’ usual mechanic, it was decided by a vote that they should get a second opinion. Specifically, Boyd’s boss Michael, who was happy to take it in after hours and still stuck with his head under the dashboard, his legs hanging out of the open door.

“God, I hope it’s not expensive,” Scott moaned, “I can’t handle anything expensive right now.”

“What do you expect,” Stiles scoffed, “You spent $800 for it to start with. No one sells it that low just for cosmetic damages!”

Derek, the only one of them actually sitting down in the waiting area and taking advantage of both the magazines and the provided keurig, snorted. Scott gave him a pained look, and when he finally glanced up from his copy of Field and Stream he rolled his eyes.

“It’s a pack vehicle. You can use pack funds. Now calm down already.”

Scott sunk into the other available armchair, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. He slunk down, looking for all the world like a toddler in a snit, before pulling his head up to say:

“Thanks, Derek.”

“You’re welcome Scott.”

Stiles pressed a hand against his mouth to stop from laughing.

Without a third chair in the room, and totally unwilling to try and leaf through Golf Digest, Stiles wandered around the shop instead. There were broken pieces of machinery set on low tables, each with a little card so they could seemingly be used as cautionary tales. His favorite was a disgusting looking filter, crusty and crystallized like it was trying to return to sedimentary form, with the label: “sugar in the gas tank”.

Around the welcome desk, a slender hallway led to the garage itself, and more example pieces dotted the way, enticing him further in.

A tire rim with one flat side labelled “ignoring the low tire pressure light”.

A curved piece of metal with a smooth pad on top, worn through in the center like the hole in a sweater and covered in sticky grease labelled “changed their own brakes, got grease where it shouldn’t be.

A pile of wires and metal Stiles couldn’t identify labelled “ignored the manufacturer recall”.

By the time he reached the door to the garage he was quietly muffling giggles. The sound of various winches and drills and hydraulic lifts filtered in, almost completely covered what noises he was making, but he didn’t want to take the chance of someone noticing he was gone and making him come back and have more awkward conversation about finances. He ducked down a little, peering around the corner and into the shop. He spotted the van right away.

The mechanic had moved on from his previous position over to the passenger seat. The large plastic panel that made up the right half of the dashboard had been pried free, and now sat in the driver’s seat along with an assortment of tools, and Michael was sifting through the various wires and connectors within the open space, a look of concentration on his face.

For all his bitching, Stiles really hoped the dumb thing would get it together. It didn’t deserve the scrap heap any more than Baby did.

It was possible he got too attached to cars.

His gaze drifted over the frame, along the hood--also painted navy with little white points meant to look like stars--and up across the windshield, feeling nostalgic for his own years spent tinkering. Then, with his eyes unfocused and his mind drifting, he caught them. Only visible because of the angle of the overhead lights in the dim garage. Two crisp handprints, right on the center of the glass, and a smeary bit of writing done in only the oil from somebody’s fingerprints.

“Set me free.”

Michael clicked the dashboard back into place and then hopped out, the squeel of the door hinge prompting Stiles to turn from the door and hustle down the hallway. His heart felt like it was in his throat, and his pulse was racing, despite how ardently he was trying to keep it together.

He’d developed a nice set of instincts, over the years. They all had. More importantly, they had learned not to ignore those instincts when they were going off, not ever, not even when it seemed small or insignificant. Maybe in another town it would be called hypervigilance, but in Beacon Hills? You trusted your gut, always.

His gut did not like that Redrum, writing-on-glass shit one little bit.

He slid back into the waiting room, ignoring Scott and Derek’s curious glances, and sidled up to the Keurig to make himself a cup of coffee. Michael appeared behind him only two minutes later, his own expression bland and disaffected.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, “Or nothing I can find anyway. The latches and locks all work properly, although I oiled the hinges on the door a little in case they were sitting tight and putting undue pressure on there. The emergency brake is fine. All your wiring is fine. The only thing I did find was some scratching on that panel under the steering wheel, it’s probably been pried open too many times and the little plastic tabs keeping it closed are wearing out. Other than that, you’re looking good.”

Scott and Derek stood, and nodded along with the explanation, although Stiles could tell neither believed it. Having a car roaming by itself was unsettling, and he figured they’d probably end up taking to another mechanic, and then another, until they found someone who could figure out what was causing it and make it stop. He stirred his coffee with a stir stick--although he hadn’t bothered to add creamer--and scowled down at the liquid as he thought.

“So what caused it, then?” Derek asked.

Michael shrugged. “Pranksters, I’d bet. It’s close enough to Halloween that it could be local kids, or maybe you’ve got some friends with a sense of humor. Releasing the parking brake wouldn’t be the strangest thing we’ve seen here in the name of a joke.”

He gestured behind him, at the filter covered in sugar.

“Alright, well if you’re sure,” Scott sighed, “How much do we owe you for the diagnosis?”

“Nothing.” Michael grinned, something mischievous and cheshire that Stiles did not like at all. “Except Boyd has to work an extra shift for me.”

Before he could even think twice about it Scott was nodding like an eager puppy.

“Deal.”

 

[4]

 

Boyd was glaring at them over the table, but it didn’t seem to phase Scott as he summarized the results of their visit.

“So unless someone here wants to confess to playing a trick, I guess we’ll just have to start patrolling the border of the property more often, looking for footprints and dropped cigarettes, anything that would indicate someone else coming near the house and causing trouble.”

Stiles raised a hand from where he was splayed out in his favorite kitchen chair, the one with the wobbly back legs that made it perfect for leaning backwards.

“I have an alternate theory.”

Erica snorted, but Scott just nodded sagely.

“You have the floor.”

“That bitch haunted,” he said, and then dropped his hand and waited for the others to work out the details.

“That’s stupid, ghosts aren’t…” Allison trailed off, “Or, no, I guess we have fought a ghost before.”

“The mechanic didn’t find anything wrong with it,” Isaac offered, and Jackson nodded along.

“And you did buy it off the side of the road, from some rando with a burner phone,” Erica offered.

“It was not a _burner_ phone, it was a _basic_ phone, I have the same one--” Scott started, and then Erica cut him off.

“Yeah, because you bought it from a gas station.”

“Hold on, who did you buy it from?” Derek asked.

“I don’t know, some lady. We didn’t exchange names.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like...wrinkly? White hair?”

“And why was she willing to sell it for $800 when it doesn’t have any mechanical issues?” Jackson asked.

“Because it’s like super old, I don’t know!” Scott snapped.

“Yeah, from like the seventies, that shit’s a classic at this point, no way it’s just that cheap for no reason.”

“Dude, you totally bought a haunted car!”

“ _I did not buy a haunted car!_ ”

Scott smacked his hand on the table a few times, trying to bring everyone back to focus.

“Right! So, as I was saying, that bitch haunted. What are we going to do about it?”

Derek folded his hands in front of him, and raised an eyebrow at Stiles.

“I assume you have a plan already?”

“No, I mean,” Stiles winced, “Yes. Just...it’s half a plan, okay, at best. Frankly, we’d all be better off just pointing the car towards the forest and letting it wander of at will, but we could like...I mean, we could _try_ to channel the ghost and get whatever is inside it to move on.”

Derek just stared at him, self satisfaction radiating from his end of the table. After a few moments of silence, he cracked.

“Okay, fuck, fine. You are no fun, Derek, and I hate that you don’t ask leading questions like a good sidekick. What happened to our report, Derek? Where’s the love?”

Derek reached a hand out and clasped Stiles’ fingers in his, and then gave a sarcastic grin.

“Worst boyfriend ever. Okay. So what we could do is wait until dark, since it always manifested its weirdness at night, and we could go out and form a circle near it, have Lydia touch it--”

He could feel her glare hot across the table, and pointedly kept his gaze somewhere else. He knew how much she hated using her powers, but she was the one most sensitive to this shit and he did not make the rules, okay? If he did, they would be a lot more streamlined, with consistent internal logic, and they would involve way less rare expensive bullshit ingredients to do magic.

“--and then we just, like...engage the ghost in dialogue. Eighty percent of ghosts are just confused about where to go and how to cross over. Trust me, they want to leave just as much as we want them to.”

The distinctive writing floated to mind. _Set me free_.

Most of the pack was nodding, including Lydia which was a relief, but when he glanced back at Derek he looked like he was holding back laughter.

“What?”

“Eighty percent? Did they do a study, to get that number?”

“Oh, shut up, people study the paranormal you know.”

“Was it at the University of Ghosts?”

“Derek.”

“Spectre State? Poltergeist Tech?”

“I am the funny one here!” he snapped, and then quieter, from his place at the table, Scott mumbled:

“I did not buy a haunted car.”

 

[5]

 

It was past midnight when the McCall pack shuffled into the garage in their pajamas. Scott pressed the button for the door, which rolled up with a loud mechanical squeal and let the moonlight from the woods spill in to the concrete. The overhead light was dim, set as it was behind a clouded glass sconce. Only a small pool of yellowed light settled on the floor, enough for the ten of them to arrange themselves in a loose circle, reminiscent of a seance.

They didn’t join hands, exactly, and there were no theatrics. Each one touched the two on either side of them, whether it was fingers set against the side of a knee or the soles of two feet pressed together Lydia sat closest to the van, and leaned her whole back against it in order to complete the circuit so to speak. Kira yawned against her shoulder. Erica kept listing to the side, almost falling onto Boyd’s shoulder before jerking herself awake again.

“Okay,” Stiles said, “Let’s get started.”

Lydia closed her eyes and hummed, reaching for something with her mind that none of the others could see. Her brow furrowed, briefly, and then smoothed out until her features were totally slack, her mouth falling open and her head loose on her shoulders.

“There’s a soul in the van. A kid, maybe a teenager? He’s furious and….amused? He thinks our seance is funny.”

“Do you have a name?”

She shook her head. “No, just a lot of static. It’s...I can’t reach him fully for some reason.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, “Young spirit. We know that you’re inside our van--”

The horn honked, short and sharp, and everyone present jumped in place.

“The van. Your van. We know that you’re in there. We just want to help you. You’re not supposed to be here still, you’re supposed to be on the other side.”

The headlights flipped on and then the emergency lights. They flashed on and off, clicking like a metronome, and bathing the pack in alternating golden and red light. A long, loud creak sounded from inside the cab.

“I know, okay?” Scott said, “I know that you love the van. I love it too. It’s a great van. But you aren’t meant to be here, ghosts can’t live long on this side of the veil.”

“If you stay, you’re going to get exorcised or worse,” Stiles added, “so please just talk to us. Reach out to Lydia, use her voice. She’s our resident psychic, she’ll be able to help you speak.”

“Not a psychic,” Lydia murmured, but then fell silent. They all focused on the fan, the room still flashing gold and then red and then gold and then red. Every set of eyes was trained on Lydia, and then…

“Guys, I can hear an extra heartbeat,” Isaac piped up.

Derek whipped his head up, and swivelled around like he was adjusting his sonar before settling his gaze on the van’s windshield.

“Me too. There’s someone in the van.”

“What? But...he’s dead.”

Derek was already off the ground, Boyd and Isaac not far behind, and he made it to the driver’s side door in two strides.

“No the fuck he’s not.”

Stiles heard a small “eep!” from inside the van and then Derek was wrenching the door open and Isaac was reaching past him to pull out a gangly teenage boy dressed like a cartoon of a burglar. His all black ensemble, balaclava included, was a bit ruined by the big white Aeropostale logo emblazoned on his chest.

“What the fuck?!” Stiles shrieked and Allison echoed the sentiment.

“When the fuck did you get here?!”

“I guess I know why I couldn’t read him right,” Lydia scowled, “Only chance, kid, who the fuck are you?”

“Brandon!” the kid flailed his hands in front of him, his feet not touching the ground and Isaac’s hand still holding him up by the scruff. “I’m Brandon, and this is my van. I was just trying to get it back.”

“This isn’t your van,” Scott growled, “I bought it fair and square from some lady whose name I probably should have asked for, shut up Stiles.”

Stiles lifted his hands in surrender.

“That’s my grandma, okay? She hates this thing, says it’s too ugly to keep in our driveway and the neighbors are going to complain, but it’s my _baby_ . I restored it, it was going to be my senior year capstone project, and then she just _sold it_ , and I knew I had to get it back!”

Stiles’  face scrunched up in confusion. “So, what, you decided haunting it was the best plan?”

Brandon fiinally stopped struggling against Isaac’s hold and slumped down, looking as miserable as a wet cat.

He sighed, “Not at first. I was just trying to hotwire it, but that shit isn’t easy and you guys wake up super early so I kept having to bail early.”

Realization dawned on Scott’s face. “And you left the emergency brake off or the door open when you ran away.”

“Not always. But. Yeah.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, “and then you wrote a weird message on the windshield?”

“I dunno, I just thought…I mean, I heard you guys talking one morning about fairies and centaurs and shit and I figured you were really superstitious. Just seemed like the logical thing to do. You’d get freaked out and give it back to my grandma, and then I could find a place to store it where she wouldn’t be able to do that again.”

They all exchanged glances, debating without words how much they wanted to get involved in this domestic spat, before Derek nodded at Isaac who carefully set Brandon back on the ground.

“Well, we are pretty superstitious,” Lydia said, “but we’re not stupid. I don’t think your grandma is going to buy that thing back come hell or high water. It was ugly before and then these morons,” she hooked a thumb toward the boys in the group, “painted a giant wolf on the side.”

“Hey!” Erica said, “I happen to like that wolf!”

Boyd grinned, small and private.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I…” she leaned further into his side, returning his smile with something soft of her own and pushing into his space, “I really like it.”

“Well it’s still not yours,” Brandon pouted, “She had no right to sell it.”

“Agreed,” Stiles said, “so how about this? You can come over after school and work on it, keep it as your senior project and whatever else you want it for, just so long as we can still use it for hauling our shit around.”

Brandon’s eyes flicked around the group, assessing, before he offered a hesitant nod.

“Okay. I guess...okay.”

“Awesome,” Scott grinned, “shared custody?”

He offered a hand to shake and Brandon took it.

“Shared custody.”

“And one more thing,” Derek said, “We need to meet your grandma. No way am I getting in trouble for aiding in the corruption of a minor, if you decide to run away and live out of the van or some shit like that.”

Jackson snorted, and then Isaac muffled giggles against his hand, before the group broke down into laughter.

“Fucking fine,” Derek sighed, “I’m not aiding in the corruption of a minor _again_.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be on time, but then my daughter fought bed time from 8 to 11, then I slept for exactly one hour, then my son woke up and wouldn't go back down, so now it's 2am and we're watching Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 while I finish up my dumb, dumb story about a haunted van. Parenting is magical.
> 
> Stay tuned for more sterek week, I'm hoping to get every day just like last year, as a warmup for Nanowrimo.


End file.
